


With Good Luck I'll Find the Dark

by dietplainlite



Series: So Tonight That I Might See [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dietplainlite/pseuds/dietplainlite
Summary: Exhausted, Rey finally gets the chance to be alone and feel what she needs to feel. But she can't ever truly be alone.





	With Good Luck I'll Find the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OccasionallyCreative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/gifts).



The _Falcon_ and what remains of the Resistance are eleven hours into their journey when Leia commandeers the pilot seat from Rey and installs Lieutenant Connix in the co-pilot seat.

“Go,” she says. “You look like hell, and you’re useless if you drop from exhaustion.”

Rey wanders through the ship, crammed in every corner with people and porgs, until she finds the only space where no one is bunked down, in the ventral gunner bay.

She curls up in the seat, wrapped in her poncho. It’s cold, but no colder than most nights on Jakku. Hyperspace is still a novelty, and she fights vertigo as she gazes out onto the swirling blue and white tunnel.

Lightspeed. Rain. Swimming. All new experiences.

Loss. An old experience that never fails to feel new.

And something else. Something that feels both dangerously new and frighteningly familiar, but it’s so tangled up with loss that she can’t separate it.

For a moment, so brief that the memory feels slippery, she had thought she had succeeded. They’d stood in the wreck and carnage of that throne room and the air had thrummed with their connection, the sound of his heart pounding through her veins, into her bones. But then—

No. That hurts so much that she chokes back one sob, then another, until the pressure in her chest is uncontainable, and she breaks. She’s cried more over the last few days than she has in years, but in trickles and small bursts. 

This is a breaking storm.

She muffles her sobs in her poncho, not wanting to disturb anyone, not wanting anyone to discover her.  They might try to comfort her.  Or worse, ask her what’s wrong.

There’s a good chance they would airlock her if they knew what was wrong.

When it happens, she thinks for a second that the ship has lost pressure. But shift of pressure in her ears and the muffling of sound are accompanied by an awareness, like a tugging of a string attached to her solar plexus.

“Go away,” she says, burrowing further into her poncho.

“Rey—”

“Go. Away!” she repeats, as loudly as she dares. What she lacks in volume, she makes up for in intent, and the transparisteel viewport creaks.

“Careful,” he says. “This ship could fall apart at any minute anyway. You don’t want to help it along.”

She ignores him for several moments, but the connection holds.   “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. Do you think I have control over this?”

“I don’t know anything about it.” She knows he’s not really there, but his presence, crouched next to her, is overwhelming in this small space. “All I know is that I want it to stop. What if people find out? Your people or mine. I couldn’t even tell your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Yes, your—wait.” Rey sits up. “You thought she was gone.”

“I couldn’t feel her anymore, after…”

“She must have closed herself off from you. What if she did it on purpose and I’ve given it away?  See?  This is why we can’t do this.”

He looks stricken, in much the same way he had in the throne room. “If she closed herself off, that must mean—”

“Do you blame her?”

“No.”

“Rey—”

“Please. Don’t. What is there to say? We asked too much of each other. I know that.”

He’s quiet for a long time. She expects the connection to end, but he remains. She looks at him more closely. He’s wearing a loose-fitting tunic and pants. Black, of course.

“Were you sleeping?”

“No. I don’t sleep much.”

“How do you stand it?”

“What?”

“All of…this” she says, waving her hand in the air.  “Everyone on this ship is so sad, and so afraid and I can feel all of it, and on top of what I feel, it’s going to crush me. You’re on a ship with hundreds of thousands.”

“You have to shut it out.”

“How?”

He looks down for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip as he considers.

“Think of it like a shield generator. It’s going to start from one place. Probably your chest, because that’s where it hurts the most, right?”

“Yes.”

“Get in touch with the Force, and once you’re centered, imagine it, just like that, a shield, but instead of keeping out canon blasts, it’s other people’s emotions.”

“All of them, or just the sad ones?”

“That’s up to you. At first you may need to block it all out, until you learn how to filter. And you may not be able to do it for very long at first.”

“Do you keep it all out?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“Mostly?”

“Sometimes…sometimes I let in fear.”

“It makes you feel stronger, doesn’t it?”

He doesn’t answer. A wave of anger washes over her but she pushes it away and breathes. It’s harder here to center herself than it was on the island, but she finds the tiniest thread, and when she touches that thread it winds around her, enveloping her in a whirlwind of golden light, and she’s in the center, calm, focused. Then she shapes the light around her until it forms a shield and finally, yes, it’s only her and her feelings. And they’re bad, but they’re a single burden, one she can carry.

“Thank you,” she says, opening her eyes.

He’s there, looking at her the same way he had in the forest, when she’d called his grandfather’s lightsaber.

“What?” she says. “Did I do it wrong?”

He shakes his head. “You did it on the first try.”

She smiles, but as her head clears, she’s left with only her own pain, and a major reason for that pain is sitting in front of her.

“I can’t do this,” she says. “We can’t just play make believe like we’re not trying to kill each other outside of whatever this is.”

“Are we?” He says it simply. No sarcasm, no artifice.

“No,” she says, tears sliding down her cheeks. “What are we going to do?”

“Come to me.”

“Please don’t ask me that. You know nothing’s changed.”

“But you want to.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Say you want to.”

“Why does it matter if I say it? I can’t”

“I want to hear you say it.”

She looks at him, at his shiny, dark eyes and crumbling mouth. He’s not going to last a month at this ruling the galaxy business.

“I want to come to you,” she says. “More than anything I’ve ever wanted. And saying no was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

He doesn’t look triumphant when she says it, or even relieved. He blinks, dislodging a single tear from his left eye. She watches it trail down his cheek, and before she can tell herself not to, she reaches out, touching his face, catching the drop on her thumb. She jerks her hand back as quickly as she extended it, staring at the droplet as it runs down her hand. She fights the urge to taste it.

She meets his gaze again, and her stomach drops at what she finds there. A desire so palpable it seems to come off him in great silver waves, and something in her wants to rush out to ride those waves to the horizon, while something else tells her to run for cover.

Before she can make any kind of choice, two things happen. The _Falcon_ comes out of lightspeed with a shudder and a groan, and her connection with Kylo ends. As the sounds of the ship filter back into her consciousness, she loses a grip on the shield she’d built and all the fear and sadness she shut out assaults her again, though now tinged with a small amount of hope. She’s too exhausted to put up the wall again, so she rolls with it, experiencing it, processing it, finding a spot within it. Maybe that’s good sometimes, to remind herself what she’s fighting for.

She looks down at her hand again, at the faintest trace of moisture left behind.

She wipes her own eyes, puts on the brave face, and ascends.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "So Tonight That I Might See" by Mazzy Star
> 
> find me on tumblr at kylo-wouldnt-like-those-chips


End file.
